


Casablanca

by thedevilchicken



Category: Alien Series, The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:08:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8174432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all the plants in the 'verse, Hicks had to walk into his.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all the plants in all the 'verse, Hicks walked into his. 

It wasn't really _his_ damn gin join, of course, not by a long shot. It wasn't like he owned the shitty place, 'cause if he had then he'd've called it _Riddick's Café_ just for shits and giggles instead of the fluorescent sign that just read _BAR_. He'd've done something about the damn suspicious stains on the ceiling in those weird-ass swirling patterns like someone'd tried to paint the universe up there in cheap-ass hooch or blood or both, he'd've ritually burned all the furniture 'cause that was pretty much all it was good for if you didn't want your ass and your drink to stick to it, and he sure as shit wouldn't've allowed colonial marines to waltz on in there like they owned the place, whooping it up like they'd never had shore leave in their whole damn miserable careers before. And sure, Riddick knew Hicks had had shore leave at the very least, but that little fact was kinda beside the point. 

They walked in, the lot of 'em, Hudson and Hicks and Vasquez and a couple of new ones whose names Riddick didn't know, at least not yet, the whole damn team except for Gorman who was who the fuck knew where, and Riddick just sat there real quiet-like in his quiet corner and watched them. They were already stinking drunk, pretty damn near literally 'cause he could've sworn he smelled the liquor fumes just rolling off 'em all from all the way across the room. And he should've left, he knew that, he _knew_ that, he should've slipped out the back way before he got himself right into trouble and had done with it, pretended he'd never been there that night or they'd never walked in or neither or both, but there he was, sitting, watching, eyeing them across the room from the relative privacy of his dark corner. 

It wasn't really _his_ corner, of course, 'cause if it had been he'd've at least gotten a chair that didn't rock against the floor like a ship with a half-burned-out grav unit and a table that didn't look like it'd limped its way through an interstellar war with the wounds to tell the tale. But it was his corner more than it was anyone's or at least it had been for the past couple of months since he'd landed there on Noctis, 'cause the owner asked no questions and so Riddick told no lies. He was living in the apartment upstairs, a couple of shitty rooms with flaking paint and the smell of cooking grease ingrained in it stationed up there above the bar. The perpetual night on Noctis suited him, though he kinda wondered why anyone had ever settled there in the first place because of it. Still, he didn't feel a whole lot like leaving anytime soon.

But then there was Hicks. And sure, it was maybe a coincidence or they'd've come in guns blazing and not stumbled in drunk, and sure, it wasn't even like they were mercs: they were real, honest-to-God colonial marines. They weren't there for him, he was pretty sure, so what the hell difference did it make if they found Richard B. Riddick knocking back some reeking drink with an alleged relationship to bourbon from a dirty glass in some hole-in-the-wall shithouse of a bar in some backwater city on a world no one gave two concurrent shits about? Chances were they weren't gonna try to take him for the bounty. Marines weren't in it for the cash, in his experience, not on their crappy pay. There was something other than currency that drove people into the colonials.

Not that the bounty was what Riddick was thinking about right at that precise moment. For a start, what he thought about was nothing at all. He drank his shitty maybe-bourbon and he watched them across the room, drinking, drinking more, drinking till Hudson staggered outside to throw up greasy Noctan food into the gutter while Vasquez laughed out loud and called him colorful names. Hicks went outside after them, so Riddick followed at a not-quite-careful distance. Hicks lit a cigarette and left the others to their drunk-ass dumbassery, and he walked into the dimly-lit alley by the bar. Riddick followed. Riddick drew his knife.

"You know I know you're there, right?" Hicks said, not turning, wreathed in smoke under the flickering streetlight, freaking psychic or maybe just well-trained. He was probably just well-trained, but Riddick had seen some shit in his time that'd made him think twice about assumptions. "You know I saw you in the bar?"

"Sure, I know," Riddick replied, because maybe he did know and maybe he didn't but Hicks didn't need to know he wasn't sure. 

He could've gotten the point of his knife to the spot just by Hicks's spine and pushed it in before Hicks ever had the chance to move, considering just how drunk the guy was. He was swaying slightly, not quite dangerously but a couple more drinks and it would've been, so it would've been easy, almost nothing at all, and Dwayne Hicks would've bled out all over the shitty Noctan alley till he died there. Or till he got saved and run off to the medics, at least, if someone stumbled over and found him, not that medics were real medics on Noctis, just the odd backroom sawbones who charged pretty steep for the morphine. Riddick thought maybe a knife in the back was why he'd followed Hicks out, just to cover his tracks, except he didn't go for an artery after all, after that. He didn't kill him. He stepped up close to Hicks's back and he put the razor-sharp edge of the knife to Hicks's throat. The way Hicks was swaying with the drink he'd drunk, he cut himself on the blade without Riddick moving it at all. He cut himself thinly, the blood rising up, but he didn't even try to get away. He didn't panic. Hicks had never been the panicking kind.

"You gonna kill me, Riddick?" Hicks asked. "You do that and you'll have so many goddamn marines crawling all over this rock you'll never get out alive." But from the tone of his voice, almost teasing, Hicks knew he wouldn't do it. That was more than Riddick knew, but it was convincing anyhow. "You gonna kill me or do you have something else in mind?"

He hadn't had anything else in mind, 'cept maybe he had, right in the back of his head, more a faint memory than any kind of a plan for the night. But then there it was, dragged right up front and center 'cause it seemed like Hicks remembered, too. Back before the eyeshine, before the first slam, before the name _Richard B. Riddick_ had ever meant a goddamn thing to anyone at all, there'd been a dropship pilot and a squad of marines. Back before Ursa Luna, Corovan, Butcher Bay, he'd gotten drunk on some backwater, jerkwater moon and gotten into a scuffle with the backwater, jerkwater locals. The marines got themselves involved 'cause maybe he wasn't quite one of them but he was still theirs somehow, not a mascot and not part of the team but still _theirs_ , and Hicks walked him back when they were done, Riddick's knuckles bloody, Hicks's bottom lip split wide open though by the time they got back to the ship it'd finally quit dripping down his chin, down his neck, into the collar of his shirt. 

They didn't say much. They drank together in the cargo bay, bruised and metaphorically licking their wounds over some half-illegal shit that Riddick had stashed in the vents, taped up to the metal. They sat there on crates of guns they were shipping somewhere, who the fuck knew where 'cause all the bases and the outposts and the stations had bled right into one. Hicks spilled booze down his chin over the dried-up blood and Riddick leaned in, licked it off of his skin, Hicks's two-day stubble rasping hard against his tongue. Hicks didn't hit him, though he half expected it and was almost ready for the fight, almost wanted it, wanted to fuck him up for no reason he could think except right then there were only two things he wanted and he couldn't think Hicks wanted the other. But one long, frowning, gaze-locked moment later, Hicks took ahold of the front of Riddick's shirt and kissed him on the mouth instead. Riddick guessed maybe he'd been wrong. He guessed maybe Hicks _did_ want the alternative.

Nothing much else had happened that night, not 'cause they didn't want it to but 'cause they were just too damn drunk to make it happen. It was three days and two planets later, while the others were making a delivery to some miniscule, insignificant marine outpost and probably getting falling-down drunk in the process, when Hicks pushed him up against the nearest bulkhead and kissed him hard even though they were both stone sober. They got each other off with one hand each shoved down the front of the other's marine-issue pants, panting, five degrees too hot so sweat stood out slick on their skin and soaked their shirts down the line of their spines. Riddick laughed when it was over, breathless and low, and Hicks just smiled in spite of himself as he tucked himself back in. 

Riddick thought maybe they'd gotten it out of their systems but then, five days later, there they were again, 'cept that time it wasn't fast and hard against a bulkhead in the cargo bay. Hicks opened up the sliding door to Riddick's room and left himself inside.

They were en route to some other planet like they always were back then, their second pilot on shift and not Riddick for once though the guy was pretty crappy at his job and no one rested real easy while he was at the helm. Riddick said something flippant about how the head was three doors down and Hicks must've gotten turned around, fucking thick-headed marines, but Hicks just took off his shirt instead of answering, or maybe that _was_ his answer. Hicks untied his boots and toed them off while Riddick watched him from his bed. Hicks tugged off his socks and unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants and damn if he didn't just strip himself right down to his bare skin right there in Riddick's quarters, straightforward, no fanfare, no teasing at all, not even a smile on his face. And he stood there naked on the deckplates in front of him, hands on hips, expectant, once he was done. 

There was a whole list of things Riddick could've done right then, from marching Hicks's pale, bare ass right back on out of his room the way he came to knocking him unconscious and depositing him back in the shared marine dorm, back in his bunk. What he did instead was go down on his knees on the deckplates. What he did was squeeze Hicks's balls with one hand and put his mouth on him, tease the tip of his cock with the tip of his tongue till Hicks's hands clawed at his shoulders and he cursed under his breath, guttural, strained. What he did was press the tip of one finger straight back between Hicks's legs, between Hicks's cheeks, and crook it there against his hole, teasing lightly like a freaking promise. It made Hicks gasp right out loud. In no time at all, he made Hicks gasp again and buck his hips and come, like he'd been ready for it, like he'd been thinking about it for days. Riddick had been. It wasn't a stretch to think maybe Hicks had, too.

Four nights later, Riddick was naked when Hicks turned up in his room, and Hicks ate him alive with the look on his face even before he undressed himself, long before they fucked. Hicks lubed Riddick's cock with his fight-rough hands then Riddick fucked him, standing, pressed right up against the back of the door. Hicks wasn't exactly real quiet, cursed under his breath as he pushed back, as Riddick's cock pushed inside him, as skin met skin. And once Riddick was finished, well, then it was Hicks's turn; he shoved Riddick down on his back on the bunk and he followed him down, knelt between Riddick's big thighs and lubed his own cock up hard and slick. In that alley behind the Noctan bar, years later, Riddick remembered how he'd groaned when Hicks pushed into him, despite himself. He remembered Hicks's flushed face, the sound of skin on skin, wrapping his legs around Hicks's slim waist and pulling him in deeper, sharply, how he'd gotten hard again and he'd come again before Hicks'd been even close to finished. He remembered leaving bruises on Hicks's biceps and his hips from how damn hard he'd squeezed. He remembered ten more times like it after that, fifteen, twenty. He remembered how they'd spent their shore leave drinking, fucking, laughing, gripping at each other till it hurt. They never needed much conversation. They weren't friends, after all; they were totally something else.

Hicks turned. Hicks looked at him in the near-dark under flickering lights, wide-eyed, for the first time since the last time before the shit he'd gotten into trouble for. It was pretty much the only shit he really hadn't done 'cause okay, so he'd never been an angel, but he hadn't killed the men they said he'd killed that time, at least not all of them. He looked at Hicks with his shined eyes that'd been brown, he thought, the last time that Hicks had seen them. It would've been pretty easy to kill him and pretend none of it had ever happened, 'cause Hicks wouldn't've put up much of a fight, not even sober. Hicks didn't believe the things they'd said Riddick did, or maybe he did and he just didn't care. 

He put away the knife. He turned away. He walked away. And when Hicks didn't follow, he turned back and said, "Do I need to write a goddamn formal invitation?"

Hicks rolled his eyes. He followed. Inside Riddick's room, up the rickety stairs after clanging footfalls against half-rotten metal, they kissed as hot and hard as they ever had, or hotter, harder. They stripped each other down in the dark 'cause the place had no lights, 'cause Riddick hadn't needed them since the first time they'd burned out. Hicks fumbled, cursing, his blunt nails and hot hands on Riddick's skin. And then Hicks rode him, gasping, groaning, hard, Riddick's slick fingers teasing Hicks's hole even while his cock was in him. Hicks just groaned louder, never quiet, and bucked his hips and stroked himself till he came all over Riddick's chest like he'd done fifteen, twenty times before, and Riddick pushed up, caught Hicks's hips and held him there as he pumped up into him, jerked, cursed, came there in him like he'd done twenty, thirty times before. It was familiar. Fuck, maybe in a way he'd even missed it. Maybe, in a way, he'd missed _him_.

Forty minutes later, skin still sweaty from the first time, they did it again. They had a whole lot of years to make up for, after all, and Hicks didn't seem to mind the dark when Riddick went down on his hands and knees on the creaky-ass bed. Hicks teased between his cheeks with the pad of his thumb and then the tip of his cock. Hicks fumbled his way inside him, slow, deliberate. Damn, it was all still so familiar. He'd never been the nostalgic type, but right then he was halfway there.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all the plants in the 'verse, Hicks had had to walk into his. Maybe it was by design or maybe it was all some bizarre coincidence, but when the marines left three days later, Riddick found he didn't give a good goddamn either way. He didn't ask him to stay. He knew he wouldn't have; he'd've chosen the corps and fuck, he wouldn't've blamed him. Or maybe he would've, and that would've been it's own problem.

"I'll see you again real soon," Hicks said, and grinned a lopsided grin as he pulled on his shirt around what passed for dawn on that godforsaken rock.

And Riddick, still naked in bed, found he hoped he would. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Hicks left and Riddick watched him go. Maybe next time he'd kill him but he probably wouldn't. But he never made plans that far ahead.


End file.
